Will Germany Ever Phase Coal Out? Coal Still Accounts For 40% Of Energy MixAugust 2nd, 2017 by James AyreDespite more than €20 billion being spent on the country’s green energy sector every year, coal still accounts for around 40% of Germany’s energy mix — that represents an only ~10% drop since 2000, despite all of the money and PR since then.

So, where does all of this leave things? It leaves the world in a situation where Germany’s emissions reductions goals and its actual actions don’t align.

Reuters provides more: “To avoid disruption in the power and manufacturing sectors, coal imports and mines must keep running, say industry lobbies, despite the switch to fossil-free energy. … He also stressed it was crucial for steel manufacturing in Germany, the seventh biggest producer in the world, that use a quarter of the country’s coal imports. …

The federal government adopted its Energiekonzept (energy plan) in October 2010. At this time, it assumed life extensions of German nuclear power plants up to the late 2030s. In 2011, after the Fukushima incident, it was decided to phase out nuclear power generation in Germany by the end of 2022. From the beginning, the focus has been on ambitious climate protection policies: a greenhouse gas emission reduction of 80% to 95% by 2050 with step-by-step objectives for each decade, including a 40% reduction by 2020 (compared with 1990); a massive increase in energy efficiency to yield total energy savings of 20% by 2020 and 50% by 2050; and the steady development of renewables to a 60% share of final energy consumption and 80% of power consumption by 2050. Thus, Germany’s climate protection targets go beyond EU targets. In order to achieve the 2020 CO2-reduction target, the German government decided in 2015 to implement a “Climate Action Programme 2020” (Aktionsprogramm Klimaschutz 2020)). This includes specific measures for the electricity sector which will have a direct impact on the use of lignite and hard coal. In November 2016, the German federal government also agreed upon a “Climate Protection Plan 2050” (Klimaschutzplan 2050) which sets out strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 61% to 62% by 2030 compared with 1990. The plan was presented at the UNFCCC COP 22 meeting in Marrakesh and means a move away from EU-wide efforts towards national climate action. However, up to now, there are no concrete actions concerning coal.

Amid worldwide debate on the use of robots for work and possible consequent unemployment issues, the government made a first move that may help slow down automation in industries, according to sources, Monday.

In its recently announced tax law revision plan, the Moon Jae-in administration said it will downsize the tax deduction benefits that previous governments provided to enterprises for infrastructure investment aimed at boosting productivity.

Currently, enterprises that have invested in industry automation equipment are eligible for a corporate tax deduction. Companies can have part of their corporate tax ― between 3 percent and 7 percent of the investment ― deducted under the policy, with the rate varying by the size of their business.

This sunset policy was scheduled to expire at the end of the year. But the government suggested extending it to the end of 2019 while decreasing the deduction rate by up to 2 percentage points.

The original definition of a robot tax is to levy tax on the use of robots for industrial automation. With more advanced and high-powered robots introduced at workplaces, human workers will naturally lose their jobs. In the meantime, the government will need more funds for welfare programs amid the rising unemployment rate. The notion of a robot tax has been made to make up for the decreasing tax revenue on such a backdrop.

"Though it is not about a direct tax on robots, it can be interpreted as a similar kind of policy considering that both involve the same issue of industrial automation," an industry source said.

There is no country that has officially adopted a robot tax yet. But governments, economists and technology experts have continued to argue about the pros and cons of such a tax.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates is one of the well-known advocates of a robot tax. In an interview this February, he said governments should levy a tax on the use of robots in a goal to fund retraining of those who lose jobs and to slowdown automation.

"For a human worker who does $50,000 worth of work in a factory, the income is taxed," Gates said. "If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the robot at a similar level."

He also stressed that there are still many jobs that need human hands and minds and thus cannot be properly replaced by robots.

"What the world wants is to take this opportunity to make all the goods and services we have today, and free up labor, let us do a better job of reaching out to the elderly, having smaller class sizes, helping kids with special needs, all of those are things where human empathy and understanding are still very unique," he said. "We still deal with an immense shortage of people to help out there."

On the other hand, global organizations such as the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) have been strongly against the idea of collecting taxes on the use of robots, claiming the robot tax will undermine proper competition and technological innovation in the robotics sector.

Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers also opposed the idea of taxing robots, calling Gates' argument "profoundly misguided."

"A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced," he said.

In Europe, an argument for the introduction of a robot tax ignited last year when European Union lawmakers started work on a proposal to tax enterprises for their robots.

This February, however, the EU adopted a resolution that opposed the introduction of a robot tax, while officially categorizing an artificial intelligence robot as an "electronic person" with a personality.

Amazon.com Inc. is turning to the debt markets to fund the acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc. and power Jeff Bezos’s planned conquest of the supermarket business. The e-commerce giant is approaching the market following mega bond deals from AT&T Inc. ($22.5 billion) and British American Tobacco Plc ($17.25 billion), and Moody’s Investors Service said this one could be as high as $16 billion. It also comes at a time when tech companies have been active debt issuers, including a debut offering from Tesla Inc. on Aug. 11, and Apple Inc. announced Tuesday its first Canadian-dollar debt sale.

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Here's why investors should look again into Amazon's cash from operations.Months ago, several distributors (Amazon suppliers) in the UK complained about Amazon taking so much time to send them their payments. These distributors have been waiting for years for receiving payments from the biggest e-commerce company in the world, but still nothing happened. MusicBrainz, a non-profit UK firm, has been waiting since 2013 (!) to get its payments from Amazon.While we believe that is a rare case (the three years thing, not the paying late one), it opens an un-answered question about why Amazon has one of the highest days payable outstanding in the industry, and to what degree that inflates its cash from operations, Amazon's most important metric?What Amazon does?Amazon takes advantage of its high turnover rate to push suppliers to wait more for their payments (you don't complain about being paid late when you sell your inventory quickly at a suitable price).Amazon has a history of its ruthless negotiations with its suppliers (check here and here).Just to make it clear, we are not attacking Amazon for doing such a thing. After all, that's simply an exchange of interests - most suppliers are willing to let Amazon pay late for the sake of selling their goods on a platform that has one of the highest turnover ratios. We just want to inform investors that the most important metric they are using to value Amazon is not as good as it seems.What if Amazon pays suppliers earlier than it does? What implications that would have on its CFO?For example, in Q3 2016, by postponing paying to the suppliers and paying business expenses, Amazon generated $4.48 billion in CFO.However, if Amazon paid for its suppliers and its expenses directly after receiving money from its customers, and collecting its receivables during the quarter, Amazon's CFO would be just $2.37 billion, 47% lower.How much of its free cash flow and cash from operations would have been?With a capex of $1.84 billion, Amazon's FCF would have been only $530 million instead of the reported $2.64 billion. That is 80% lower.------------------

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